Grid access now a 500GW headache for EU wind power: WindEurope
EU countries must use same trick they used two years ago to speed up renewable energy permitting, and ditch 'first come, first served' principle for grid connection bids, says WindEurope
Grid access is the new “number one bottleneck” to deploying wind power at scale, says industry body WindEurope, as it sets out immediate actions countries can take to ease queues.
More than 500GW of potential wind energy capacity is currently waiting for national authorities and system operators to assess their applications for a grid connection assessment, said WindEurope in a new report.
Not all of those projects would be built, with some even competing against each other for the same sites. But the massive backlog of applications is throttling EU ambitions to increase its wind energy capacity from 220GW today to 425GW by 2030 and 1.3TW by 2050.
“Grid access is the new permitting – the number one bottleneck to the build-out of wind. The system is clogged up – and holding back hundreds of gigawatts of wind farms,” said WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson.
“This means less energy security and higher power prices. Some reforms will take time, such as more anticipatory planning. But some things can be improved immediately, notably better management of grid connection queues.”
WindEurope’s new report analyses the grid access challenges in Europe and proposes what it said are “practical, immediate actions to release grid capacity” for new and repowered wind farms.
To speed up the expansion of grids, countries should it said apply the principle of “overriding public interest” when permitting grid infrastructure. That is regardless of whether it’s to connect renewables directly or for the broader grid reinforcement.
“Overriding public interest (OPI) for new wind farms is a success story,” said Dickson. “Germany and others that use OPI have significantly ramped up their permitting volumes - and done so very quickly. But electricity is useless if there’s no grid to transport it.”
“National countries can apply OPI to grids – what are they waiting for?”
Grid permitting authorities must also move away from the “first come, first served” principle to awarding grid access, said WindEurope.
Currently “immature and sometimes purely speculative” renewables projects need to be assessed when their request comes in, creating excessive queues and backlogs and holding up the more mature and promising projects.
Countries should apply “filtering and prioritisation criteria” to better handle the requests for grid connection, said WindEurope, with several EU countries and the UK already experimenting with new measures to manage grid queues “more dynamically.”